Latinos in Costa Mesa Respond to the Rancor : Politics: Controversial city actions have led a group of residents to begin planning ways to increase ethnic involvement in government affairs.

COSTA MESA —  Juan Garcia stepped away from the podium at a recent City Council meeting, a little breathless and exhilarated but confident that he had made his point.

From a front-row seat in the nearly empty chambers he had risen to oppose a proposed ordinance that would have prohibited pushcart vendors in the city, a measure that he considered a slap at the city’s Latino community. The council subsequently voted to reject the ordinance as too far-reaching.

Although under no illusion that his was the deciding argument, Garcia was certain that he had contributed a great deal just by his presence. Such challenges will be an increasing feature of council debates, said Garcia, one of a group of about 30 residents, most of them Latino, who have been meeting quietly for several months to devise ways to become more involved in decisions that affect them.

“There has been a vacuum of ideas,” he said recently, taking time out from a busy day as editor of the Santa Ana-based Spanish-language newspaper Union Hispana. “One of our goals is to make (the Latino community) more politically aware of their power and their rights. You achieve that by doing more of what I did” at the council meeting.

The Costa Mesa City Council has drawn national attention for its attempts to stem illegal immigration into the city’s rapidly changing neighborhoods--actions considered by many to be anti-Latino. The council’s efforts have been condemned by local social and religious leaders and even called discriminatory by a prominent Cabinet official.

What has been virtually absent, though, is reaction from the city’s own rapidly growing Latino community. Spurred by such issues as pushcart vendors and the city’s much-criticized ordinance on dayworkers, Garcia and his friends want to recruit Latinos to apply for posts on city committees and ultimately field candidates for City Council seats.

Group members also expect to speak out forcefully in the impending race for two council seats that will be decided in November.

“There’s no communication between Latinos and Anglos in Costa Mesa,” said Roy Alvarado, a drug and alcohol counselor who started the breakfast meetings at the Denny’s Restaurant at Red Hill Avenue and Bristol Street every Tuesday morning. “If nothing else, I think it’s good if it can be a launching pad for other things.”

Mitch Valbuena, who has also participated in group sessions, added: “We want to urge people to get involved, and to register to vote. Whether they vote for one person or the local, state or federal level, we need to let them know they do have a voice.”

Valbuena noted that many services in Costa Mesa--such as school and recreational activities--are not advertised in Spanish.

Discussion issues range from drug and alcohol abuse to labor issues. The group is particularly concerned with reaching out to and educating the broader Latino community about its rights.

Many say the city’s roughly 12,000 Latino residents lack influence because there has been no one willing to take the lead in speaking out on issues that effect them and because the community lacks role models.

“It’s been a slow process because all of the individuals willing to spend the time in helping our community were outside of the city,” said Dalia Badajos, a businesswoman and four-year resident of Costa Mesa, who has attended several meetings.

“Another big factor in the Hispanic community in general,” she said, “is the hesitancy in getting involved for fear of a number of things--like not being able to communicate. Maybe they don’t have the education, and there is a feeling of inferiority in that respect.”

In many ways, the experience of Costa Mesa’s Latino community mirrors that in other county cities with emerging Latino populations. A decade ago, the city was still a fairly homogenous enclave of well-to-do Anglo suburbanites.

The dramatic changes since then can be seen in the shifting demographics of the Newport-Mesa Unified School District, which includes all of the city’s elementary and primary schools.

In 1980, Latino students represented a scant 7.5% of the school population, but by 1987 they accounted for 14.4%. In the 1989 school year, more than 20% of all students were Latino, according to district officials.

What the numbers reflect, Latino social and political observers said, is a community barely able to keep up with its growing numbers and lacking the social cohesion to wield much political clout.

“When you talk about that kind of growth, one question is how much time does it take for a community to obtain a social fabric?” said Monsignor Jaime Soto, director of the Latino ministry for the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange. “Leadership has to act out of some kind of network.”

Soto pointed as an example to St. Joachim’s Church in a southeast Costa Mesa neighborhood that borders the city’s most populous Latino area. The church began holding a Spanish Mass only in the early 1980s, he said. Today, three Spanish-language Masses are held each week, and the church is offering a broader array of services for its Latino congregation.

Yet, many residents are still unaware of the parish’s increasingly important role. “For a long time people continued to go to Santa Ana for Mass,” Soto said. “Even though the congregation is growing, it will take a while for people to identify St. Joachim’s more closely with their community.”

Others point to the continued economic deprivation of much of the county’s Latino community as a reason for lagging political influence.

Traditional economic roles have lingered for decades and are hard to break, social scientists said.

“The economic function dictates the course of political relations,” said Gil Gonzalez, a UC Irvine professor of comparative culture who is writing a history of the formation of Mexican barrios in the county.

“In Orange County the role the Mexican community continues to play is one of cheap labor,” he said. “There is a schizophrenic attitude that they are needed . . . but you still see objections to Mexican encroachment.”

For Margaret Rivera, born and raised in Costa Mesa, the consequences of such powerlessness have been all too apparent.

Rivera is St. Joachim’s coordinator of weddings and the Quinceanera, a traditional event that celebrates a Latina’s coming of age. She said many Latinos continue to be exploited because they lack education and language skills.

In one recent case, she said, a Latina was cheated by a seamstress who failed to deliver a dress for a Quinceanera celebration as promised.

“There are a lot of things that people in the business community are doing to Hispanics because they think they’re still in pueblos,” Rivera said angrily. “We took the seamstress to small claims, and the woman got her money back. But if she hadn’t known me, she wouldn’t have known what to do.”

Rivera said many divisive issues taken up by the City Council could have been avoided or addressed with much less rancor had there been more response from Latinos.

Others agree:

“I would say, unequivocally yes, some contention could have been avoided if we had that input before,” said Councilwoman Mary Hornbuckle, who has met several times with the Latino group.

“We have a growing Hispanic population,” she said, “and they need to be heard. I have urged them to publicize (committee and commission assignment) opportunities and to seek out people who can represent them.”

Rivera, Garcia and others say it is a long leap from breakfast meetings at Denny’s to fielding credible council candidates. But they said they cannot afford to turn back.

“We have to make the average family aware of the issues and how they affect them,” said Garcia, who is also a board member of the Santa Ana-based Hermandad Mexicana Nacional.

Rivera added: “It’s not going to be easy, because there will be a lot of people fighting us. I think it’s sad but true that many (Anglos) still feel uncomfortable around Hispanics.

“We are going to have to work hard to change attitudes.”

Times correspondent Mary Ann Perez contributed to this story.